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Miskito/Lesson structure

In this page we shall see what the standard elements of a lesson are and what is in each standard element. For information on the technicalities of producing each of these elements using the course's templates and conventions, see the Layout Guide.

Contents

Before starting a new lesson:First of all make sure you have read and understood this chapter, and look at some existing lessons to see in practice how they are organised and developed.Next, start deciding how many "points" there will be in the lesson and what will be in each component. At some point you also need to decide what the title of the lesson will be (try to make the title the same as one of the "model" sentences).

Some of the information you will need to take into consideration at this point is found in other pages such as the Proposed Syllabus and the Planned Lexicon, so you will want to study these too.

You will also need to look at the Table of Contents and existing lessons in order to see how to make sure everything "fits together" right.

The technical instructions needed to perform the layout of a lesson using the course's templates are to be found in the Layout guide.When you're sure you're ready to start actual writing, the next step is to create the page and its title, following the instructions here.

There may be any number of "points" (not necessarily three!). A lesson is divided into the sections (with second-level headings) shown here. Each of the "points" is named in the heading by a reference to the linguistic concept (e.g. Adjectives), corresponding English language item(s) (e.g. Is, This and that) or Miskito language item(s) (e.g. "Lika" and "sika") covered, choosing whichever designation is most easily intelligible for most readers (and otherwise in this order of preference). For example, the sections of Lesson 1 is as follows:

Sections of Lesson 1:

Nini Mary sa

Is

This and that

The

A

Vocabulary and review

Each of the "points" consists of three "components": Model, Commentary and Exercise. The "Vocabulary and review" section has two components, of course: Vocabulary and Review. This gives the following generic component structure:

The purpose of the model component is to present a limited linguistic sample (such as a text, a conversation or a set of sentences, phrases or words) that illustrates, as clearly and succinctly as possible, the point to be studied.

The items that specifically exhibit the point under observation are in bold in the model sentences. For example, here (from Lesson 1):

Naha John sa.

Naha tuktiki sa.

Baha Lucia sa.

Baha yaptiki sa.

the point being studied comprises the demonstrative pronouns, which are naha "this" and baha "that".

The translations of the model sentences is also provided, but are initially "hidden". The user may view them at will by clicking on "Show" and hide them again by clicking on "Hide". This is what the whole thing looks like:

Study

What do they mean?

This is John.

This is my child.

That is Lucia.

That is my mother.

Naha John sa.

Naha tuktiki sa.

Baha Lucia sa.

Baha yaptiki sa.

NB Thanks to the course's template technology, all an author needs to write on the lesson page to get this is the following!

Different kinds of exercise are possible here. Translation (for comprehension) of a few additional examples, such as in the following example (Lesson 1), is just one of various possibilities:

Practice

What do these sentences mean?

Naha sirpi sa.

Baha nini sa.

Naha yaptiki sa.

Answers

This is small.

That is my name.

This is my mother.

As the example illustrates, formally such an exercise consists of an instruction (here, "What do these sentences mean?"), a list of input items (in this case the Miskito sentences) and a corresponding list of output items (i.e. correct answers). The latter are initially "hidden", but the user may view them or hide them at will by clicking on "Show" or "Hide".

Two different kinds of paragraph may be used in any number and order: comments and notes. The main information should be placed in comments and any less central observations in notes. Comments appear in large font, notes in normal-size font, bulleted, e.g. (in this example there are two comments followed by one note):

The general definite article ("the") is ba. The article follows the noun.There is another article na which denotes something near the speaker, and so is translated by "this".

Notice the parallellism between the demonstrative pronouns naha, baha and the articles na, ba!

The Vocabulary and review section comes at the end of the lesson, after all the points, and covers the entire content of the lesson from two perspectives: a list of all the new vocabulary introduced, and an exercise that is useful for reviewing everything learnt in the lesson.

The vocabulary component lists all the new vocabulary items in alphabetical order in a three-column display. For each item the meaning is given, and for most a part of speech (POS) indication. (The abbreviations used for POS can be seen on the List of abbreviations page.) POS and meanings are all initially hidden, showing only the Miskito items, but can be shown or hidden individually as the user likes. Clicking on a word takes you to the lesson section where the word is first introduced. For example (Lesson 1):

The review component takes the form of an exercise (of any kind that has an input (or cue) and an output (or answer). Items appear as a vertical, numbered list. Answers (to the right of the corresponding cues) are initially hidden and may be shown or hidden individually. For example (Lesson 1):

Say in Miskito

Review

My name is John.

Nini John sa.

My father is big.

Aisiki tara sa.

He is young.

Witin tyara sa.

My mother is young too.

Yaptiki sin tyara sa.

That is my child.

Baha tuktiki sa.

This is a book.

Naha buk kum sa.

The woman is my mother.

Mairin ba yaptiki sa.

The man is my father.

Waitna ba aisiki sa.

My father is a man.

Aisiki waitna kum sa.

This animal is a dog.

Daiwan na yul kum sa.

See the Layout Guide for instructions on how to set up a vocabulary component.